Continuing from yesterday’s notes on Lawrence Ferlinghetti as visual artist – a portfolio today – of a, still-somewhat random, selection of Lawrence’s paintings.
Two years after Elisa Palimony and Giada Diano published their survey, Poetry magazine published a spotlight on Ferlinghetti’s art – here and here
(the first, a portfolio, the latter, a commentary, both are essential)
“All I wanted to do was paint sunlight on the side of a house,” said Edward Hopper (or words to that effect), and there have been legions of poets and filmmakers obsessed with light. I would side with the irrational visionary romantic who says light came first, and darkness but a fleeting shadow to be swept away with more light. (“More light!” cried the great poet, dying.) Poets and painters are the natural bearers of it, and all I ever wanted to do was paint light on the walls of life.”
More thoughts and aperçus from the Commentary:
“The kind sun of Impressionism makes poems out of light and shade. The broken light of Abstract Expressionism makes poems out of chaos.”
“Images appear and disappear in poetry and painting, out of a dark void and into it again, messengers of light and rain, raising their bright flickered lamps and vanishing in an instant. Yet they can be glimpsed long enough to save them as shadows on a wall in Plato’s cave.”
“Have wide-angle vision, each look a world glance. Express the vast clarity of the outside world, the sun that sees us all, the moon that strews its shadows on us, quiet garden ponds, willows where the hidden thrush sings, dusk falling along the river run, and the great spaces that open out upon the sea…high tide and the heron’s call….And the people, the people, yes, all around the earth, speaking Babel tongues. Give voice to them all.”
“Paint like a fiend awake, obsessed. What is important in a painting is its fascinating, mysterious manifestations of life. So tell me what life is to you in your painting. Be an enthusiast. Get excited. Don’t just sit there. Excite the imagination.”
Ferlinghetti portfolios on the web – There’s a central one here
This article from 2018 is well-illustrated.
& from 2020 Karen Strike reviews the New York Études, show for flashbak
(with more images)
